Semester 2 goals (Spring 2012)

Having busy days and nights is what keeps me going.  My work is fun and diverse and some days I toggle between all of the different things too quickly to do my best job keeping track of what is essential.  So on the dawn of our second semester at school (my online course and PhD student second semesters already started, but better late than never) I am going to post some goals so I can remind myself of what is important every day. This is not exhaustive, of course-- just some things to focus on. Family is number one, and my students next; after that the order is less meaningful.



1) Family

• Don't look at my phone around my daughter unless it is looking at something with her
• Pack good lunches
• Appreciate my awesome husband

2) Being a Face-to-Face Teacher

• Be clear about expectations 
• Hold students accountable to the goals they or I set for them
• Give meaningful feedback about their work every cycle
• Be a caring but motivating teacher of second semester seniors

3) Being an online teacher

• See being a face-to face teacher and 
• Commit to meeting with each student for a half hour individual conference each week
• Be in touch with their families and home schools with good news at least every month

4) Being a Department Chair

• Update the department meeting agendas and dates for the semester prior to the first meeting 
• Support initiatives of individual teachers or sub departments by making connections with resources around school 
• Develop an annual report question that fosters discussion and thought around our curricular review
• Visit classrooms every cycle and write reflections to the teachers

5) Being a Summer School Director

• Find the best people to teach in the open positions and make all candidates feel good about the process of hiring
• Support new and wonderful staff as they transition into the school 
• Communicate clearly with other areas of the Academy and the school as the summer approaches
• Communicate well with families and students about their summer experience

6) Being a PhD student

• Complete the readings for the evening they are assigned (and at least gather the optional readings into Mendely, if not read them) 
• Keep my reading journal on this blog (search for the tag ETEC750D) 
• Continue connecting with scholars in my areas of interest
• Narrow down a dissertation topic (or range of possible questions) 
• Learn from my amazing classmates
• Submit one paper for publication or a conference

That's all, I guess.

(image from http://mikevial.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/plate-spinning.jpg)

Meaningful Assessment (Annual Report Part 2)

This year the first prompts for our annual reports were written by department heads and specific to the work that departments are doing with respect to our curricular review. The European Language Department chose to invite teachers to look at assessment.  

As we continue our curricular review process next year, we will be focusing on assessment. We’ll use your responses as a starting point for our discussion at the beginning of the school year.  Please respond to one of the questions below:
1. Describe a specific assessment you use that you think successfully differentiates between those students who deeply understand from those who do not.
2. Describe one formative and one summative assessment you use and explain how you use them to guide student learning in your classes.

I am going to respond to number one.  Last fall students in Spanish 5 were responsible for keeping up on the news in a particular region of the Spanish speaking world.  Every day class began with one or two students giving presentations about a few recent news stories from their region.  The learning objectives of the on-going project were both for students to have a better understanding of world events and global diversity, and also for them to work to make meaning out of real Spanish communications (reading and/or listening skills).  We had an agreement that they would use sources in Spanish.  But I am sure that a number of students found and read news in English and then translated their presentations-- it was simple to tell who those students were because of vocabulary issues.

The students who were developing deep understanding of the realities in these countries were able to communicate the stories in their own voices (typical Spanish 5 linguistic complexity) but stretched themselves and the classes just enough with new terms.  They were telling the story in their own voices, meaningfully. This was a result, I think, of their efforts to make meaning out of the sometimes challenging newspaper Spanish.  This task challenged and expanded their sense of the world (learning objective one) and their linguistic capabilities (learning objective 2)

As in all things, there was a spectrum of performance, and at the opposite end were the students who likely read the news in English. Their struggle to make meaning was to turn their understanding, in English, into Spanish words.  That is a totally different challenge than making meaning out of Spanish text.  And the fact that they had not enjoyed the meaning-making in Spanish was evident in their presentations.  They tended to use vocabulary and diction that was not as accessible to the group, both because of an over-reliance on translators and a lack of confidence in their own Spanish: "Just because I don't get what I am saying doesn't mean that my more able classmates and teachers don't."

The second part of this assessment each day was the questions that followed.  (I went through a number of permutations about how to encourage questions--prizes for the best each day, tallying them over the course of a week, etc. . . that challenge is another issue entirely.) In this element of the presentations, the rest of the students in the class gave me a sense of how well they understood the material which further reflected the presenter's understanding.  No questions often meant that it was over everyone's head, and the presenter had not had a good enough grasp of the topic to make it accessible to their peers. Whereas lots of questions usually meant that the presenter had engaged more deeply, thus engaging their peers.  I was interested to see the "cool factor" of the individual students fade away in this element of the class.  Students were not easy on the "cool" kids when they did a poor job on these presentations and a culture began to emerge where doing excellent work became the new cool.

I think this particular assessment worked well in my class because of three structural elements:

1. It was ongoing:  students presented every couple of weeks and had the opportunity for to redeem themselves in case of unsatisfactory work.  Also, if they couldn't go on a given day (due to sports, life conflicts or work-load in other classes), they could trade with other students. 
2. Students were accountable to their classmates, not just me.
3. Students chose the content of the presentations:  Some students often presented about sports or celebrities in their countries, and others delved into more complex political realities.  

Accountability in a World of Difference

This weekend I was part of a three day, thirty-six hour, group relations conference called Leadership in a World of Difference, or something like that. The conference was based on the Tavistock model and was part of a Group Dynamics course that I am taking. In this event, essentially the people are brought together to create a temporary organization that allows members engage in a spirit of inquiry about how groups function. The group is split, convened, divided, poked and prodded into a variety of situations that serve as catalysts for engagement. The mantra of the experience is to examine the "here and now".

There is much fodder for a lengthy examination of the conference (I could just paste tweets and FB posts of some of my colleagues to give a sense of the variety of emotions that were experienced) but there was one moment at the end of the weekend that was really salient to me in terms of teaching and learning.

Some of the participants are Conference Management, including the director and a number of consultants. The role of the consultants was hotly explored over the course of the weekend, mostly in the informal settings (outside of the formal conference). In group settings, their role was mostly silent-- they sat and observed and sometimes offered some guiding questions, or

provocative thoughts, but they did not lead (in a traditional sense), or in most cases, evaluate the process.

It was amazing how uncomfortable this made the participant members. While the goal of the conference was stated (while it was by design not concrete, it was clear) there was a sense that consultants needed to take on a role of helping participant members understand what we were experiencing and what the endpoint should look like. The challenge of this, of course, is that they didn't know. Each individual experience informs the greater experience of the group which is a totally organic and unique organism. While there are some predictable patterns based on group theory, nothing is

set in stone and nothing is for sure. The experience that the consultants bring to the mix is a quiet and persistent patience to let the exploration occur.

This reminds me of really good teaching. One of my colleagues from back in Hawaii has a blog tag line: "I do my best teaching when my students don't notice I am there." I've always liked that and think that it is exactly what was going on this weekend. As participants in this conference we were immersed in a carefully planned and crafted environment. We were then let loose to see what we could get out of it, what we could learn. At the end of the weekend there was great frustration on the part of a number of members that they didn't get more support, that they needed more help.

Then, there were some energetic and impassioned voices that asked us to look carefully at the helplessness that our neediness for guidance

displayed. Why were some so unwilling to take accountability for their own experience and their own learning? Why the anger that the management didn't make the endpoint more clear and hold hands to help members get there?

As with good teaching, the management created an environment in which meaningful learning and inquiry would be fostered. The end point was not imagined, because that would be limiting. Similarly, if I assign a project to my students, might it better if I know less about what, exactly, the outcome will be? Is it good, and sufficient to create an environment to promote learning and let them loose? That is what constructivist teaching is all about. The ideal is students learning or creating something previously unimagined. When students have accountability for their experience, then they are truly learning and creating. After this weekend, I have a new hope for my students: that in their futures, they will encounter experiences like mine this weekend as rich and rewarding opportunities to create and explore meaning. And they will be well practiced in this at least in small part because of the time I spent with them.